A group of less-academic students have been left at a disadvantage with a common-level woodwork paper that contained difficult words across 15 written pages, offered no choice and lacked a marking scheme, a teacher has said.
Peter Masterson, ASTI subject representative and a teacher at Mountmellick Community School in Mountmellick Co Laois, said that the new wood technology paper, which is worth 30 per cent of a student’s marks, posed a problem for students with lower literacy levels.
Students have already completed project work which will account for 70 per cent of their overall mark.
“In question four, the word ‘annotations’ is used, and a weaker student may not know what that means,” Mr Masterson said.
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“Given this was a common level paper, it would have been preferable to use plain English.
“A weaker student — which includes students who were impacted by two school closures during lockdown — may have opened this 15-page exam and seen no choice and a very long paper that they only had 90 minutes to complete.”
Questions on the paper included wood defects, marking out timber, types of saws, wood joints, types of screw heads, child seats, the suitability of certain timbers, varnishing, the use of veneers instead of solid timber and more.
Mr Masterson welcomed the appearance of environmentally-themed questions on what he said was a climate and sustainability-focused exam.
“Question three was on the planting of trees, which is a good topic that addresses carbon footprints,” he said. “But a question on the life cycle of the seed would again be a challenge for a weaker student on what should be a common-level paper.”
Try this one at home:
Junior Cycle wood technology, common level
Design a poster to explain the process of photosynthesis in trees. On your poster include notes on any three stages in the process of photosynthesis.
